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Trans Desire explores the ramifications of using desire as the basis for contemporary political movements rooted in a struggle for autonomy, from the perspective of a transgender person about to begin hormone replacement therapy. It examines the affinities between psychoanalytic theories of desire, queer theory and biopolitics, using the work of theorists including Avital Ronell, Giorgio Agamben and Judith Butler. Trans Desire proposes that radical queer porn is an example of world building that effectively resists biopower without turning to former movements' demands for rights and legislative reforms.

Affective Cyborgs is framed as a necessary departure from Donna Haraway's cyborg. Appropriated from the complex sexual politics of BDSM culture, the figure of the "switch" is proposed as a new possibility for conceptualizing agency in our encounters with technology. A doubling of the cyborg body, the switch locates the liminal space in which the binary of dominance and submission may be explored as a contextual and meshed embodiment of contingency, materialized via affective decision. This framing suggests new directions for feminist philosophies of technology.

From the back cover:

Micha Cárdenas takes apart the terms and implicit contract binding the project of "Master Thesis." What is it to master an object of inquiry that resists boundary control or conceptual arrest? How does one pursue a thesis when genre and gender assignments are continually destabilized? Situated between soft rant and manifesto, between autobiographeme and scholarship, between single and double authorship, _Trans Desire_ bravely faces down the quirky habits of our bildopedic culture, reformatting the very conditions of institutional submission.

- Avital Ronell

In this powerful meta-account of transgressive embodiments and desires, Cárdenas enunciates a rousing, theoretically complex and practically explicit politic of resistance which will resonate with scholar and layperson alike.

- Allucquére Rosanne Stone

In Trans Desire, Micha Cárdenas offers a moving and provocative exploration of transgender desire, its limits, and its potential for biopolitical resistance. At an intersection of poetics and theory, Cárdenas embraces a queer ethico-politics devoted to radically challenging not only heteronormativity but the oppressive power of Empire more broadly.

- Diane Davis

About the authors:

Micha Cárdenas [transreal.org] is an artist/theorist and a PhD Student in Media Arts and Practice at the University of Southern California. She received her MA in Communication at the European Graduate School, Saas-Fee, Switzerland and her MFA from UCSD.

Barbara Fornssler is a PhD student at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, and a writer whose research interests include the body and technology, multimodal communication, and philosophies of gender.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

In Trans Desire, Cárdenas offers us nothing less than a practical theory of desire that creates livable, affirmative worlds that resist the violence of capitalism and heteronormativity. -Zach Blas, E-MISFÉRICA

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

Trans Desire/ Affective Cyborgs is a eloquent piece of queer literature. Micha Cardenas is a brillant author/ artist/ speaker. She fluidly articulates the place where theory, art, and politics intertwine and then make love to a beautiful transgender experience. This book is a must read for everyone interested in sex, art, and politics. Get ready to have your paradigm shifted.

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More About the Author

micha cárdenas is an artist, theorist, student, educator, mixed-race latina femme who works with movement as a technology of change. micha is a Provost Fellow and PhD candidate in Media Arts + Practice (iMAP) at University of Southern California and a member of the art collective Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0. micha's solo and collaborative work has been seen in museums, galleries, biennials, keynotes, community and public spaces around the world. Her co-authored book The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities was published by Atropos Press in 2012. Her project Autonets has been presented in cities across North America, South America and Europe.

In 2014 micha is a visiting scholar in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. In 2013 micha was a fellow at the Post Media Lab at Leuphana University in Germany, a New Directions Scholar at the USC Center for Feminist Research and a MacArthur Foundation HASTAC Scholar. She holds an MFA from University of California, San Diego, an MA in Communication from the European Graduate School and a BS in Computer Science from Florida International University. She blogs at michacardenas.org and tweets at @michacardenas.